 | | | | by Brendan O'Neill |
Two weeks ago a poll conducted in Iraq by an Oxford-based polling company claimed that Iraqis are happier now than they were a year ago, generating such headlines as 'Iraq has never had it so good' (1).
| Today news reports tell us that Iraq is in turmoil. The killing and dismemberment of four American contractors in Fallujah in the north on 31 March sent shockwaves through the coalition. Ensuing clashes between US marines and Sunni militia in Fallujah, and between American, British, Italian and Bulgarian troops and Shias in the south, have left more than 140 Iraqis and 30 American soldiers dead since Sunday. On 6 April 2004, the US military sent helicopter gunships to fire on the northern town of Ramadi after 12 marines were killed by Sunni guerrillas; British troops killed 15 Iraqis in al-Amarah in the south (2).
| Political and media pundits have struggled to define this latest violent episode. Bush officials denounce it as the work of 'criminal' elements; The Times of London says it is a 'bloody uprising'; some claim it is being instigated by foreign terrorists seeking to destabilise Iraq. US Democrat senators claim the violence, carried out by Sunnis in the north and Shias in the south, demonstrates the potential for civil war if the coalition pulls out too early; other reports, however, claim that Sunnis and Shias are joining forces to express a 'common hatred' of the coalition forces, and that five truckloads of former Saddam-supporting Sunnis recently moved south to fight alongside Saddam-hating Shias in what is being described, rather hysterically, as a 'national uprising' against the occupation (3).
| It is the disparate, chaotic nature of the violence that allows so many varied interpretations of what is driving it. The outbreak of violence looks less like a coherent uprising against occupying forces or the early days of a civil war, than an angry lashing out against the coalition (or, in Fallujah, the private mercenaries that the coalition has hired to execute some of its more risky tasks). Such flashpoint violence shows the profoundly destabilising impact of the war and occupation. In removing a regime that dominated every aspect of Iraqi society, with little sense of what might take its place, the coalition has created a dangerous vacuum; now, various armed groups, Shia clerics or plain angry individuals are moving into the abandoned and lawless territory left by the war.
| For those who supported the invasion on the grounds that Saddam was a rotten tyrant, the current instability should serve as a reminder that getting rid of the bad guys is not the same as remaking a country. The Ba'athists dominated Iraq - its political sphere, policing, military matters, public provision, education, everything. Removing Saddam and his cronies might have satisfied America and Britain's desire to be seen as a force for good on the international stage, but it left a hole in Iraq.
| | | The recent violence is anti-coalition, but it is not for anything in particular |
| The coalition's toppling of Saddam was no 'liberation' for Iraqis, just as the discovery of Saddam down a spider-hole and his parading before the TV cameras was not the 'psychological liberation' some hoped it would be. True liberation is something that only Iraqis can win for themselves; it is not something that can be handed to them by America and Britain. Yet there was no liberation movement in Iraq, and no independent political force that could take over after the war. Regime removal (surely a more apt term than 'regime change') in a state like Iraq has caused deep uncertainty.
| There is no movement with the legitimacy or a strong-enough base of support to take the reins. America discovered this when it sent Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who won the backing of the CIA in Washington, back to Iraq in April 2003. A US intelligence official has since admitted that 'every time you mention Chalabi's name to an Iraqi, they want to puke'; in the recent opinion poll, Chalabi topped the list of leaders whom Iraqis 'do not trust at all', with 10.3 per cent over Saddam's 3.3 per cent. It is the absence of normal political life in Iraq which explains the rise of Shia clerics over the past year, including Muqtada al-Sadr, whom America charges with stirring up the recent violence. After a war that laid to waste the bodies that ruled Iraq for 30 years, the mosques have emerged as the only institutions with any semblance of authority or connection with the people.
| These circumstances have given rise, not to coherent political movements, but to unpredictable protests and a disparate use of force. The recent violence is anti-coalition, but it is not for anything in particular. Sunni guerrillas in former Saddam strongholds say their aim is to 'punish America'; Shia protesters in Baghdad claim they want the United Nations to come to Iraq.
| Al-Sadr caused shockwaves when he and his armed supporters took over the governor's office in Basra - but this was no traditional seizing of power (4). Al-Sadr moved in to the building after governor Wael Abdul Latif, on the advice of the British, fled. According to one report, his supporters described it as a 'peaceful sit-in' to protest against the coalition's earlier closure of their newspaper. When it was clear that British forces did not plan to storm the building, hundreds more Iraqis gathered outside and inside the governor's offices (5). The storming of an empty building that had been abandoned by a toothless governor by aggrieved Shias sums up the incoherent nature of the violence in postwar Iraq.
| If the coalition's intervention gave rise to the current instability, its panicky response to the violence has made things worse. Cautious coalition leaders tend to view Iraq through doom-tinted spectacles, where every protest or act of violence is a warning sign of a coming civil war or national uprising. Presently, Bush officials are seeking to play down the extent of the problem in Iraq. But it was they who first described al-Sadr's movement as 'the greatest threat to democracy'. Democrat senators, watching the violence of the past three days, described Iraq as a 'Vietnam-style quagmire'; 'Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam', declared Ted Kennedy earlier this week (6). The media have taken their cue from these doom-laden predictions of disaster; on 6 April, both the UK Guardian and Independent led with the frontpage headline: 'On the brink of anarchy.' (6)
| | | The coalition helped to transform al-Sadr from a 'minor cleric' into a 'martyr' |
| Postwar Iraq is certainly looking anarchic, and the reported American bombing of a mosque in Fallujah today is likely to inflame tensions. But the talk of 'another Vietnam', and potential civil war and bloodshed after the coalition nominally hands power to an interim government on 30 June, is a consequence of a culture of fear and loathing that grips America and Britain as much as it is of the recent violence in Iraq.
| Indeed, the coalition's nervous approach to Iraq, its attempt to pre-empt anything that smacks of an 'uprising', did much to provoke the current instability. Coalition officials claim that al-Sadr and his Mehdi army (to the extent that it is an army) are behind much of the violence, especially in the south and in parts of Baghdad. Yet al-Sadr was, until recently, a 'minor cleric', in the words of the Los Angeles Times; estimates of the number of armed supporters he has vary from 1000 to 10,000. The majority of Shia clerics, including those being courted by the coalition, want nothing to do with al-Sadr (7).
| It was largely the coalition's overblown response to al-Sadr over the past two weeks that transformed him into a focal point for Shia grievances. Last week Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, closed down al-Sadr's weekly newspaper Al-Hawzah, on the grounds that it was 'dangerous' and incited 'violence against coalition troops'. Yet as one report says, this 'trashy' paper with a 'circulation of 10,000 was hardly going to arouse Shias to attack [the West]' (8). The coalition also arrested some of al-Sadr's colleagues, again as a pre-emptive measure, and have now issued a warrant for al-Sadr's arrest.
| As the LA Times says, these measures helped to transform al-Sadr from a 'minor cleric' into a 'martyr'. The London Times describes al-Sadr as a 'magnet' for disgruntled Shias; if that is true, he was made into one by a nervous coalition that sees its existence threatened everywhere. Al-Sadr's rise to infamy, to being 'the greatest threat to democracy in Iraq', shows how the coalition's dire warnings of disaster can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| Watching recent events in Iraq, it is hard to be optimistic. Iraqis seem to have the worst of both worlds - invaders who destabilised their country, and American stooges and publicity-seeking mullahs to fill the vacuum.
| Read on:
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
(1) 'Iraq has never had it so good', Mark Steyn, Spectator, 27 March 2004
(2) See 'Under fire in bloody uprising', The Times (London), 7 April 2004
(3) See 'Under fire in bloody uprising', The Times (London), 7 April 2004; A delicate time for US mission, USA Today, 6 April 2004
(4) Protesters storm Basra office for sit-in, Ireland Online, 5 April 2004
(5) Protesters storm Basra office for sit-in, Ireland Online, 5 April 2004
(6) On the brink of anarchy, Guardian, 6 April 2004
(7) A 'minor cleric' or a martyr, Los Angeles Times, 6 April 2004
(8) See Tumult in Iraq, violence in Central Asia, political reform in the Arab world, Truth News, 6 April 2004
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